Is China Too Big to Fail?

China is too big to fail. Fail at becoming the biggest economy in the world that is. That’s at least according to Noah Smith. Over at Bloomberg View, Smith pushes back against all the growing pessimism over China’s economy. He notes that China’s enormous population size means it doesn’t have to be overly productive to surpass the U.S. in terms of GDP. “Here is a fact: If every Chinese person of working age had a job for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, those workers would only need to make $9.15 an hour for the Chinese economy to be larger than that of the U.S.” (On a related note, Bloomberg Viewjust hired Josh Rogin and Eli Lake away from the Daily Beast, and are reportedly paying the foreign policy reporters big bucks.)

Over at Foreign Affairs, Princeton University’s Gilbert Rozman declares that the Sino-Russian relationship is here to stay. “Moscow and Beijing have disagreements about the future order they envision for their regions. But they agree that the geopolitical order of the East should be in opposition to that of the West—and that has led to significantly closer bilateral relations.”

The U.S. is really psyched about Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s pledge to put Indonesia at the center of maritime Asia. Shockingly, the U.S. believes it can help Indonesia strengthen its maritime security. This week, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus took the lead in courting Jokowi.

“We are very interested in the commitment of President Joko Widodo’s administration. That is why we hope to improve the cooperation with Indonesia in the maritime sector,” Mabus said.

In the podcast department,War on the Rocks’ Ryan Evans sits down with Admiral Chris Parry (ret.) of the Royal United Services Institute, Bryan McGrath of Hudson’s Center for American Seapower, and Evan Montgomery of CSBA, to discuss maritime strategy.